


On Replaying

by lucidChthonia (liquidCitrus)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Replay Value AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-24
Updated: 2013-08-24
Packaged: 2017-12-24 11:52:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/939702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liquidCitrus/pseuds/lucidChthonia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>You didn’t think you’d be here again, struggling with your basic weapon and arguing with your teammates about stupid shit that shouldn’t faze you. But you went through the Door Beyond The End, and a moment later, you were waking up in a bed that wasn’t yours.</em>
</p><p>Written as a possible entry point to the Replay Value AU (based on the <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/340777/chapters/551606">Sburb Glitch FAQ</a>), and thus provides enough context to be read standalone. Previously published on Tumblr.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On Replaying

The Game is broken - that much is clear from the clipping errors, the dummied-out enemies, the bugged spawnrates, and the glitching dialog options. The Game is also real - the Archagent’s sword draws blood, the Consorts casually mention distorted versions of your past and future in dialog for what you presume is some developer’s idea of “local color”, and it’s best to know where the nearest Quest Bed is in case you need to use it. You didn’t think you’d be here again, struggling with your basic weapon and arguing with your teammates about stupid shit that shouldn’t faze you. But you went through the Door Beyond The End, and a moment later, you were waking up in a bed that wasn’t yours.

Your Pesterchum contact list is filled with strangers. Nobody else will believe you, that you played the game and now you’re here again, except for them. The Guardian opens the door and stops short. “Well, you’re up bright and early, son!” You look over to the desk and - there - a photograph of the person who should be here instead of you. But nobody will acknowledge it, and when the meteors start coming down, you swallow your fear and shaking and sense of doom, and try to figure out who you’re going to save with the disks you’ve fished out of the mailbox.

Packing twenty people into the apartment’s living room to save them from the apocalypse doesn’t work, though that only becomes clear when luck has turned so decisively against them that even you cannot ignore it. It does that to everyone who wasn’t meant to play, the strangers in your chain - your new coplayers - say. Can’t fight the nonplayer doom mechanic. You bury them, instead. You allow yourself to be dragged along by the interminable quest chain of consultations with Consort village elders. You attempt to ingratiate yourself with the Prospitian royal court in order to get to the ball that has actual food and not ramen or spritegunk at its reception. You come in to your Denizen’s cave one day, fully expecting him to send you out to do another silly fetch quest again - and instead find him telling you that you’ve learnt your lesson, and would you please kill him? You watch one of your coplayers (wearing the deceased first player’s Sprite Pendant) do the ectobiology in order to create the children that will now never play the game, because you’re here instead of them.

They say you’re brought in to complete a session that would otherwise be doomed. They say the Others, out there in the inky blackness with their eyes that glitter and bodies that twist the mind to comprehend, are just there to watch you struggle and play, like so much reality television. When you ask what the Angels are for, the winged things of fire and song within the hollow in the center of your Land, the oldest one shakes her head, and presses her hands to her face in such a way that one of the others moves to hug her. You decide to figure the Angel thing out for yourself, and one of them comes back to you, smudged with ash, and falls at your feet to beg you not to try. He dies right in front of you, and when another one of him comes by after your strangled cry for help on Pesterchum, he shakes his head, and tells you what happened in a doomed timeline. You bounce your pendant in your hand, the last thing you’ve got left of the Sprite that left you back in the days before the entire game got so complicated, and wonder how any of them know what they’re doing.

Eventually one of them takes you aside one day, and asks whether you know of Sburb.org. You shake your head. She shows you a tiny microchip. It’s called a dongle, she says - you can get it implanted, or in a charm bracelet - either way will work, she says. Though it’s harder to lose an implanted one - she points to a tiny bump on the inside crease of her elbow, as evidence that she has one too. It keeps you linear in Replaying, and it lets the servers know who you are, and the benefit to you is that you can talk to the same people before and after you Replay. That makes all the difference, she says. You’re not lonely anymore, because you can talk to the community. Ask them for help. Tell them how your day went. Even have a long-distance relationship, if you think you can make it work. She finishes the thought: people live longer this way. It’s been proven, she says, her voice catching with tears. It’s because the social relationships keep you sane.

When you go through the door after the end of the session this time, it’s with a comprehensive FAQ in your head, a dongle chip in your locket, and well-wishings from a community thousands strong. When you wake up in an unfamiliar room with your inventory stripped, it’s a little bit less of a shock, and you open your browser to find out that, as promised, the people from your last session are on the site too. They want to hear about the little differences on the world you’ve been put on this time - some of them asking for pictures of food, because there’s a new development that means you can make food out of pictures on a properly manipulated alimentator.

They say loose Replaying is hell. And even Replaying with a community is still hard - you skirt death and corruption and someone who they call a PK, player-killer, who tries to lure you into a trap out of the mistaken cult belief that killing everyone in his session will guarantee him a working Door, and an Ultimate Reward, instead of this endless loop of Replaying. But there are people who understand, and that makes it a little bit easier. When you fall into despair, they call it Knight Syndrome, and reassure you it’s not permanent. When it’s your birthday, they make cake, and give you the pictures so you can taste your own. When someone you know from your first session is spotted logging into the PrototypeTowers server and uploading photos, there is a joyful reunion.

And when you’re the last one left alive in that session, with the brain-matter of the PK on your golf club, they tell you to stay strong. You’ll never replay with the same people, they say, or it’s so rare that it’s best not to hope for it. But you’ll probably replay with others from there, people you haven’t met, or people you’ve heard of - friends of friends. One of them tells you to think of them as friends you haven’t met yet. You imagine his wobbly smile.

**Author's Note:**

> Replay Value is an AU of Homestuck, based upon the fanfiction [Sburb Glitch FAQ](http://archiveofourown.org/works/340777/chapters/551606) by GodsGiftToGrinds. It features slice-of-life play in a setting filled with existential horror, an extensive mythos including an elaborate AU variant of Sburb classpect typology, and highly realistic depictions of emotional trauma. Daily life in the world of the Replayer takes place in a set of IRC channels on the skaia.net IRC network, centered around the hub channel, [#replayvalue](http://chat.mibbit.com/?channel=%23replayvalue&server=irc.skaia.net). Longer texts, fics, and setting information are held on [Tumblr](http://rvdrabbles.tumblr.com/), Pastebin, Google Docs, Archive Of Our Own, and/or a variety of collaborative Etherpad clones. We are open to passers-by, new players, and new characters at any time!


End file.
